Wildside Nature Tours

Reentry

NMcAllister Big Year, birding Texas, Grateful, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Well, here we are… several weeks into the New Year!

(2017?!  what happened to 1996??  I clearly recall when that year seemed soooo far in the distant future.)

You haven’t heard from me in a while. I’ll admit, frankly, reentry back post-Mom’s Big Year life has been rough. Like coming off of a high. Last year was the best year of my life to date. So definitely tough to follow that. Many of you saw that glimmer in my eye as I always had another trip around the corner.

Since January 1st,  I’ve been playing catch up in just about every aspect of my life and am a bit overwhelmed… Dishes, laundry, work, friendships, carpools, teaching, etc etc…  catching up on everything except sleep. Adapting back to the way things were before the Big Year. These past few weeks have been a time for me to shift my attention back to matters at home and work. It’s truly been a joy to be back with the family!

Paul just suggested we take our Halloween decorations down. I guess it’s been a little busy. Lol!  So, as you can tell, I’m still playing catch up.. but could not wait another day to update you!

I owe you some very cool posts that cover the final push of MBY!  I head to Florida next week for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. I’m super excited to be leading trips for the festival again this year and to be presenting my first MBY talk! Check it out the festival website here:  Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival  And if you’re there, I’ll be at the Wildside Nature Tours booth, so please come by and say HI!

So, going back to start bringing you up to date…

The rest of my Texas trip in November was FANTASTIC!

We met up with friend, Scarlet Colley to take her magical pontoon boat trip for a shot at Wilson’s Plover.  Anyone who has been on Scarlet’s boat knows that ‘magical’ is the only way to describe it. Scarlet talks with her dolphin friends that surround the boat. When I asked her how close they get to the dolphins, she told me, “We feed them our joy…We touch them with our hearts… And we swim with them in our dreams.”

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Scarlet and Nancy, post-Wilson’s Plover #493!
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Scarlet and Gabriel

 

Here are the highlights of my last days in Texas in pictures:

 

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Plain Chachalaca
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Olive Sparrow
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Gabriel Mapel and Gabriel Lugo= Gabriel squared! 🙂
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Greater Roadrunner
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Nancy at Sabal Palm Sanctuary
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Always love running into Superstar birder, Gabriel Mapel and his dad, Daniel!
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Groove-billed Ani at Salineno

My next trip held a big change in temps for me!

MBY headed NORTH!

Check back soon for the last of the MBY adventures. The last weeks were full of surprises and some were ‘beyond birds!’

xoxo, Nancy

 

 

Peace, Love, Birds!

NMcAllister Big Year, Bird Chase, Grateful, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Life is never better for me than after a trip with LOTS of birds and dear friends!

I have SO much to say and so little time to say it….

But here’s a post I drafted on the plane ride home Monday followed by a busy week of soccer, baseball games, viola lessons, and finals for my class….. I’m FINALLY getting a chance to post it!

“The last 5 days went by in a flash.. and here I sit on the plane ride home….smiling, exhausted, fulfilled and exhilarated.

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Lemonade

NMcAllister Big Year, Job, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

Well, now it’s time to play ‘catch up’.  The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity with my trip to Florida, a BIG snowstorm here in the northeast and the start to the spring semester for my new environmental science class.  All fun for me!

Florida was fabulous!  The Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival was a hit on SO many levels! I had a great time working with Wildside Nature Tours to bring incredible birds together with equally amazing people!  I led 5 straight days of field trips for the festival and truly had a blast! Each trip and its guides and participants were unique. Everyone was engaged and made it such a rewarding time for me. It’s always so much fun reconnecting and leading trips with old friends and colleagues and meeting lots of new friends too!

Here are some highlights:

My flight home was cancelled on Sunday due to “Snowzilla”.  We had 30″ of snow blanket our home in Maryland! As I was fretting and wringing my hands about my cancelled flight and the possibility that I might actually MISS my FIRST class of the spring semester/my new job (eeek!)… Skye, seabird counter extraordinaire, looked me square in the eyes and with his jovial smile said one word to me.

Lemonade.

That’s all I had to hear to give my attitude the 180 degree turn it needed. Cancelled flights yield more time for birding… and more birding I did!   I took the extra time and thanks to fellow Wildside guide, Steve, had the great fortune of seeing a bird that I’ve been dreaming about seeing since I was 5 years old…. a male painted bunting!

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Painted bunting, Photo credit http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31115
The first couple weeks of teaching my new class have been fabulous.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how incredibly motivated my UMBC students are!

This week on my day off, after getting the lunches packed and the kids off to school, I took a deep breath and realized it was the first day the house was quiet since my trip and after the kids had been home for 10 days straight due to the weather.  It was a warm morning.  The snow was covered by a thick blanket of fog as it started into a steady rain.. It was the PERFECT day to pull the covers back over my head and go straight to sleep again.  And that I did.

By about 9:15 am I reached for my phone to check email as I was pondering all the things on the ‘to-do list’ that had been pushed aside in the whirlwind of activity these past few weeks.  The mile-long list (including the unsent holiday cards!) made me pull the covers even higher over my head as I entertained the idea of another hour or two of sleep in my warm, cozy bed..  With the quiet in the house after all the hustle and bustle, some extra zzz’s were just way too tempting for this overtired mom.

A fellow local bird club member had just sent an email reporting 12 + Pine Siskins at his feeder.  Knowing it was a bird I needed to see for the year and one that only came to feeders on occasion and could be missed…. I literally kicked my feet straight up in the air, covers flying off the bed and shot straight up. Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at his house and got the bird.

 

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Pine siskin, courtesy of Jeff Culler

There was only ONE thing on this planet that could get me out of that bed that morning.

And you guessed it..

BIRDS.

 

 

 

 

 

First trip!

NMcAllister Big Year, Birding with Kids, Job, Uncategorized , , , , , ,

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I just landed in sunny Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival!  Special thanks to Kevin Loughlin and Wildside Nature Tours for bringing me down to lead field trips here for the next 5 days!  So much FUN! I can’t wait!

Looking forward to seeing some great birds and meeting and reconnecting with lots of fun and exciting people on this first out-of-state trip for my ‘Mom’s Big Year’!

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